Sunday, January 24, 2010

Great Lunch Meals and Delicious No Bakes!

Hi everyone!

It's been awhile ---- we are super busy this time of year at work! Finalizing new Betty Lou's organic vegan bars that taste great and are packed full of nutrition and antioxidants! Get excited for new snack bars that are better than Larabars, Pure Bars, and Cliff Bars! Check out Betty Lou's blog and website for any updates.

January has been milder in weather, but still rainy and damp, so we always enjoy some warm comforting food, especially one-pot meals. One of our New Years Resolutions is to make a dish from one of our vegan cookbooks. So, the past few weeks we've tried Vive le Vegan's Greek Basmati Rice, Veganomicon's Samosa Potatoes, among other great meals and breads.

The Greek Basmati Rice is probably one of the best rice dishes we've tried! Great flavor, not too strong in any particular spice, just an addicting bowl of deliciousness. Full of onion, garlic, olive oil, olives, zuchinni, chickpeas, rice, parsley, and spices we could eat this every day!

Samosa Potatoes was a yummy spiced meal perfect for lunches. Spices like mustard, coriander, onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, and cumin, this dish was great complimented with olive oil and Food Should Taste Good Olive chips! We didn't stuff the potato with the mixture, we just cooked diced potatoes in the pressure cooker, and added peas, parsley, and carrots.

In one of our bread cookbooks, we've been baking whole grain breads. We discovered a great technique for making great sandwich bread. We mix the dough and knead it, then let sit for 1 hour or so, knead again, then let sit another hour or two. We bake it at 400 degrees F as a round loaf, and we put a pan of water in the oven, so the crust is nice and the bread is airy and soft! Try putting some Bob's Red Mill cereals in your bread (like 10 grain cereal, kamut cereal, or just cornmeal), as it gives a great nutty flavor and great texture.We love Greek food, and we found on vegweb.com "Real Deal Falafel" recipe. We made modifications, but it was tasty and great with condiments such as olive oil, mustard, tomato sauce, and avocado. When you get home from work it's easy to whip up a delicious dinner.

Of course to polish off a delicious meal you need some sweet treats! Delicious No Bake Oat Bites from Vegetarian Times Oct 2005 issue. We used sunbutter instead of almond butter, reduced the syrup a tad, added chocolate covered cacao nibs, and drizzled heavily with 73% Dagoba chocolate. Messy to roll, fun to make, and awesome to eat! Would be good to try an oatmeal cookie dough version with cinnamon and more raisins.

For some fun time outside of work, we've been busy with scrapbooking. Here's two pages we did, one of the Oregon Coast (we used an old calendar photo for the background), and one of our u-pick excursions this past summer!

About Us

We are twin sisters who love food, nutrition, and health. Recent graduates of Texas A&M University, we are now living in Oregon busy with work at a natural food company. We especially love cooking and baking healthy vegan food and buying organic natural foods.
(In the next year or so, expect great products from Betty Lou's Inc! - http://bettylousinc.com )